In a move deserving of some attention from all of us, the Governing Council of TERI decided to sever association with its disgraced former Director-General R.K. Pachauri. Even though his employment contract with TERI expires only in 2017, the Council decided to pay all the dues for the remainder of the tenure and bring an immediate end to it. Dr. Pachauri headed TERI, which works in sustainable development and climate change, for the past 35 years. He was removed from the post of DG by the Council in July 2015, four months after an FIR was filed against him alleging sexual harassment and criminal intimidation on the basis of a complaint by a junior woman colleague. Earlier this year, two more former employees of TERI filed complaints against Dr. Pachauri. One of these two women, a foreign national, alleged sexual harassment by him in 2008 when she was working as his secretary.
We appreciate this strong stand taken by the Governing Council of TERI, and urge all organizations and individuals to deal with the issue of sexual harassment at workplace, and elsewhere, very seriously. Ignoring instances or casually dealing with such cases will lead to more bad than good, and will harm society adversely. We hope this move by TERI serves as an example to everyone, to give weightage to issues of sexual harassment.
CSR’s Gender Training Institute has been working on the cause of sexual harassment at the workplace for quite some time. While members of the GTI regularly serve as members of various ICCs (as per the mandate that one member of the ICC needs to belong to an NGO), GTI also regularly conducts various gender sensitization trainings for different organizations, towards the prevention of sexual harassment.
Discuss this article on Facebook
